Following the team with a unique perspective on all things Phillies.Email me: PhilliesPhollowers@comcast.net – Peace, Love & Baseball – Jenn

Never A Dull Moment…

What was at one point a 7-1 lead in tonight’s game did not wind up being as easy a win as it first looked.Then again, this team does nothing the easy way.Just ask Jimmy Rollins.J-Roll was quoted yesterday when asked about the season coming down to the wire again and he said, “It doesn’t matter what sport. We don’t make things easy. We come back with three to play. We have short memories and that’s a good thing. We don’t worry about what happened [Wednesday]. We look forward to Friday.”Well apparently with those short memories, they don’t remember the mistakes they’ve made either, because some of those keep happening over and over.Like Ryan Howard missing routine ground balls at first base; his 19th error of the year.But Howard did whack a 3 run homer in the 1st inning and hit a double for another RBI in the 2nd.So, I guess if we go by mistakes vs. RBI’s, the RBI’s are winning.We’ll take it.

Speaking of RBI’s, Chase Utley had an amazing game on both sides of the ball tonight.At bat, he went 3 for 4 with 3 RBI and 3 runs scored.And on defense, Utley was all over the field, gobbling up ground balls and line drives by the handfuls.If I did my math right, in all, Utley had 9 put outs in the game.The record for number of put outs in a game is 12.Also keeping busy on the base path tonight was Rollins, who racked up 3 walks, went 1 for 2, scored a run and stole a base.Jayson Werth appeared to be feeling more comfortable at the plate too as he had 2 hits on the night and scored twice.

Joe Blanton was again, not spectacular, but he did manage to go 6 innings and only one of the runs he surrendered counted as an earned run, due to the Howard error.He gave up 5 hits, a walk and a home run.Not too shabby.The pen did their job and held the Nats down.

But the most entertaining part of tonight’s game was watching Charlie Manuel get tossed from the game in the 9th inning when he came to the defense of Brad Lidge. Lidge had seemingly struck out Kory Castro, but after first calling Castro out, the home plate ump changed his mind and declared a foul ball.Manuel went a bit nuts and let loose on the umpiring crew before exiting the field.He was so fired up, I wondered if his head might explode.Luckily, no spontaneous combustion occurred.What did occur was Lidge getting all fired up and he not only struck out Castro, but also Luke Montz behind him and then got the final out on a ground ball.

The Mets are right now losing to the Marlins 6-1 in the 8th inning.If they lose, the Phillies can clinch the NL East tomorrow with a win.And so for today, we are all Marlins fans JFingers crossed…

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